Yowane Haku

Yowane Haku (弱音ハク (よわねハク)) is a FANLOID derivative character. She is acknowledged by Crypton Future Media, Inc., the publisher of the Character Vocal Series for VOCALOID2, for commercial use.

Vocaloid Wiki
Introduced November 21, 2007, Haku was originally made as a representation of songs that use Hatsune Miku but ended up sounding awful. In such cases, the makers of that music would then proceed to whine about how their work never received attention and later moved on to whine when criticism stated their work as dull and boring, or was posted quite late when few people were on Nico Nico Douga. She became popular and her creator Caffein later established other characters following the same procedures, each representing a slightly different aspect of failure within the Vocaloids. Her staying power resulted in being recognized by Crypton who adopted other derivatives such as: Hachune Miku, Akita Neru, Sakine Meiko, and Tako Luka.

It has been pointed out by some fans when speaking about songs and PVs that feature Haku singing, that if one succeeds at producing a "bad" song, then no failure was met in the process. There are a small number of fans who disapprove of such songs, this is because it can be considered a contradiction to the point of Haku's existence being based on failure. This in particular is also aimed at the Haku songs that end up sounding "good" as Haku was meant to be far from this ideal. However, whatever songs that come out in her name are subject to the interpretation of the producer, whether they follow Haku's depiction of failure or not.

Danbooru Wiki
Yowane Haku is a Vocaloid whose name means "speaking weak words" ('speaking' here has connotation of a pent-up sigh or muttering.) She gets her start from a thread in 2chan where a user commented: "I bought Hatsune Miku for her cute looks but no matter how hard I try, I can't get anything better than mechanical sounding songs out of her."

An artist (Caffein) took this idea and ran with it to create Yowane Haku, an alter ego of all unskilled users of Hatsune Miku. Haku is a sad Vocaloid who just can't sing as well as Miku. She is always crying because of this and vents her frustration by drinking. Her image colors are silver and purple. Her character item is a sake bottle. She's also noted for her curvier figure compared to Miku and has a decent following.

This created a trend of users labeling badly-made Vocaloid songs with voyakiloid, or "shouting vocaloid." It is implied that it was Haku who sung those songs, and not Miku.

Character
Haku came to represent an aspect of failure within the VOCALOIDs, illustrator Caffein portrays her as a DTMer, a person who uses the Vocaloid program but has not mastered it and is thus stricken with grief and disappointment at their lack of talent. The fandom displays her personality mainly as a depressed introvert, and at times lonely. It should be noted that there is little to no portrayals of Haku as a mean drunk, and there are actually more pictures showing her being cheerful when drinking.

Other aspects of Haku is being a failed Miku or a crier due to her failures. It is not uncommon to see her drawn with tears in her eyes, whether she is happy or not.

Producer
The creator of Yowane Haku pairs her with Hatsune Miku in a Master and VOCALOID partnership. It shows that Hatsune Miku is a indeed a program to be used. In some cases Caffein often used Haku to represent himself when depicting interactions with Miku. His comics show the viewers that there is more than one Miku in the world and that producers attempt to make their Miku famous. With Haku her producing skills are considered low class, and for this she is seen apologizing to Miku, yet despite that her Vocaloid tries to keep her happy.

The relationship with Honne Dell is undefined, but in Caffein's comics Dell quips that anything he does, including his name, is better than what Haku can do. When it comes to Akita Neru and Sakine Meiko, she is considered an acquaintance, this is due to both characters not often being seen interacting with one another yet acknowledged for their popularity as derivatives.

Etymology
Her name is taken from Yowane meaning negative sayings/thoughts and Haku roughly translated as utter. Her first name and last name make a play on words "yowane-(wo)-haku" (弱音(を)吐く), meaning to say negative thoughts or to show white feather. Her white hair is from ハク, which has the same pronunciation with 白 (white). Haku is referred to as a "VOYAKILOID" (in Japanese, ぼやく) - 'Boyaku' means grouchy or to grumble and complain, the pronunciation in Japanese is Boyakiroido.

Appearance
Haku's design is drastically different from Hatsune Miku, a Vocaloid 2 developed and distributed by Crypton Future Media. She has white hair as her name suggests, though popularized as grey, it is as long as her body and styled into a ponytail held by a bow that is striped black and purple. She has a stray hair at the top of her head, nose length bangs, and payot. Her eyes tend to slope downward and there is a hint of under-eye circles. On her left upper arm are painted red letters, "DTM", that stands for 'Desktop Music', which is what Vocaloids were created for.

Her top is grey in color and sleeveless, the style is midriff with low cleavage covered by a purple tie. The rest of her attire is black with purple trim. She wears detached sleeves, and bell bottom pants with short white boots. On her left side is a belt strap. Her headset microphone points upward away from her mouth. Going by Caffein's character sheet commentary, Haku's early design had a tinge of grey skin, but it was not well received. Her red eyes were not an attempt to reflect albinism, but merely inspired while watching a Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. music video on Nico Nico Douga, the character named Major has red eyes.

Relations

 * Hatsune Miku, character base and voice
 * Honne Dell, fellow VOYAKILOID

Appearances

 * Literature
 * Maker Hikōshiki Hatsune Mix - Haku makes a cameo appearance as a student of Neru (ch6) and is also in chapter 7 and chapter 14, then she later appears drinking sake with Meiko (ch16).
 * Chibi Miku-san - A popular 4-koma that portrays Haku in adult form, she is introduced (#50) as an owner of a local candy shop in Vocalotown, she is a friend to both of the Hatsune sisters and is allergic to almost anything fun. Aside from that, her personality is very identical to her original character (done by Caffein), except for her alcohol abuse.


 * Video Game
 * Project Diva (PD) - Haku is an available character in the PSP game, Hatsune Miku ~Project Diva~ and again as a playable character in its sequel. If the player does not choose her for a long time, she is complete with moody mannerisms.


 * Other
 * Fanmade Promotional Videos (PV) - Haku is commonly seen in fanmade videos, portrayed in various ways or simply dancing.
 * Merchandise - Official licensed Haku figurines have been produced, such as Nendoroid Puchi and a scale model.

Vocal settings
Here are some vocal settings by fans. Do note that these are not widely accepted and simple here as an example.

VOCALOID2 Hatsune Miku
 * BREATHINESS (BRE) / 0
 * BRIGHTNESS (BRI) / 20
 * CLEARNESS (CLE) / 15
 * GENDER FACTOR (GEN) / 30 (V2); /40 (V3)
 * OPENING (OPE) / 10

Trivia

 * While she was conceptualized to originally be a Miku user, Caffein states it is not a problem to think of her as a failing Vocaloid (the assumption of Haku's purpose in the English fandom), or a co-worker, or the lady at the small candy shop et cetera. The last mention being a shout out to the Chibi Miku-san 4koma.


 * The true age of Haku is not revealed, the creator describes her "at the age where one gets depressed". But due to her drinking and (depending on the source) having a job, she is believed to be to be 25 or older.


 * An MMD model of Haku was created in August 2008 by modeler Animasa. See the Haku Yowane (Animasa) page for details, and also see other Haku models.